Calendar & Date Management

The Blackboard Calendar

A great improvement from ANGEL to Blackboard is the integrated Calendar you will find in Blackboard. You can use the course calendar to provide students with dates for course related events. Course calendar events appear to all members of the course. Common entries include:

Meetings

Instructor office hours

Exams

Guest speakers

Course items with due dates

The calendar displays a consolidated view of all institution, course, organization, and personal calendar events for a user. You can view events by day, week, or month. You can also view and organize upcoming and past events into categories.

Course calendar events appear to all members of the course. Common entries include upcoming tests, due dates for assignments, or special lectures. Course items with due dates automatically appear in the course calendar. Only instructors may create additional course calendar events.

The Calendar Interface

You can access the calendar from your course, from the Tools panel on the My Institution tab, or from the My Blackboard menu.

A. View events by day, week, or month.

B. Navigate between months.

C. Click the plus (+) to create a new event. You can also click inside a date to create an event. Assign the event to the appropriate calendar, select the date and time, and add a description.

Students cannot create an event on a course and institution calendar. Instructors cannot create an event for the institution calendar unless they have administrator privileges.

D. Click an event to manage it. You can also drag and drop an event to change the date.

E. Select the calendars you want to show, such as institution, personal, or course. By default, all calendars are visible. Optionally, change the color of each calendar to suit your preference. Using a distinct color for each calendar displays at-a-glance which calendar the event is associated to without opening the event.

All institution events appear in the institution calendar. All course events, such as assignments due, appear in the course calendar.

F. Get an iCal URL for importing your Blackboard Learn calendar into an external calendar application, such as your KCKCC Outlook account. Once the Learn iCal URL is set up in an external calendar, it is updated dynamically with new Learn calendar events. For example, log in to Google Calendar and access the Other Calendar drop-down list. Select Add by URL and paste the iCal URL generated by Blackboard Learn.

Adjusting Dates in Date Management

The Date Management feature is the single biggest timesavings tool in Blackboard. Once you learn how to do this, it will become your new best friend.

You can quickly transition your course from one semester to the next by automatically changing old availability dates, due dates, and adaptive release dates to new ones relevant to your new course. This is a terrific way to roll your course from Fall to Spring Semester without having to manually reset each date.

Date Management Steps

Use the date management tool to easily adjust all content and tool dates in your course. Accessed on the Control Panel in the Course Tools section, you can choose to adjust dates automatically or individually from one convenient location.

The first step of date management is to decide if you want the system to automatically adjust the previous or current course item dates to new dates.

Select Use Course Start Date or Adjust by Number of Days to adjust the date accordingly.

You can also review all dates and adjust them later on the Date Management Review page.

Use Course Start Date

Use this option when adjusting for new terms.

Adjust dates according to the course start date. The Current Start Date displays the date that the course is currently set to start. Change the new start date to reflect when this new course is going to start. All dates in the course adjust by the number of days each date occurs after the start date.

The original course started September 1 with an assignment due September 26—twenty-five days after the start date. If you adjust the new start date to January 12, the assignment is now due February 6—twenty-five days after the new start date.

Adjust by Number of Days

Use this option when you know exactly how many days you want to adjust dates by.

Type the number of days you want to adjust all dates in the course by. This is based on the dates that are currently set for each item in the course, not today’s date.

On June 1, you adjust dates by 30 days. The assignment that was set to be due September 1 is now due October 1.

Date Management Review page

The Date Management Review page displays all content and tools with dates set in the course. Review all dates and adjust accordingly.

A. Return to the first page and choose to adjust dates automatically. The first page also shows an inline receipt indicating when date management was last run.

B. Refresh the current page to account for any changes that were made to the course since date management was last run.

C. Filter your review by item type, such as assignment or test.

D. Filter your review by date type, such as due date.

E. Select one, multiple, or all items in the list to batch adjust dates. Adjusting dates allows users to indicate by how many days the selected item dates should be moved by. A negative number moves the dates back.

F. Click to sort the list by item name.

G. Review and adjust the due date for item. Click to sort the list by due date.

H. Review when items are made available. Click to sort the list by item availability start and end dates.

I. Review the adaptive release dates for items. Click to sort the list by adaptive release start and end dates.

J. Navigate between pages. By default, the page shows 25 items.

K. Click the date or edit icon to edit any of the dates for an item.

Items Supported by Date Management

Almost all items with dates in you your course are supported by date management. These include:

Content, such as items, files, and audio.

Assessments, such as tests, surveys, and assignments.

Tools, such as discussions, blogs, journals, and announcements.

Manual grade columns.

Course and organization tasks. The task due dates are moved during the bulk move process, and they do appear in the review and edit dates screen.

What can’t be adjusted with Date Management

Date management does NOT support editing of due dates for tasks from the review and edit dates screen.

Publisher content is shown on the Date Management Review page. You cannot adjust the dates of publisher content with date management.